Let's start with some good news. Many thanks to everyone who entered my YA SF ARC give-away and in doing so contributed some great titles to my Amazon wish list. Unfortunately, there could only be one winner and my Random Generator has spoken. So congratulations to:

I'm hoping to do another competition next weekend where a copy of Jonathan Stroud's prequel to his Bartimaeus trilogy will be one of the ARCs up for grabs.

It's been a bit of a nightmare week interspersed with moments of hilarity and oddball interest. For example, I was at HM Treasury for a meeting on Wednesday, which just happened to be the day when George 'Slash and Burn the Poor' Osbourne announced his spending review. I didn't see the man himself - probably for the best because if I'd had something throwable to hand I'd have almost certainly done so - but I did hear all about how the Greenpeace protesters managed to scale the building the day before, which made me LOL.

I also discovered this week that one of the reasons why Glastonbury has been closed in 2012 is because they can't book any Port-a-loos on account of the Olympics having booked every single one in the UK for the year.

The brain hurt and buildng rage elements to this post tie in partly with the Spending Review, which makes me furious just to think about. I've never wanted this blog to become one of those political ranty things mainly because I don't subscribe to a political ideology as such - I view all politicians as mendacious, incapable twunts and the party political system is the most destructive element of our so-called 'democracy'.

However I will say that in my opinion, the Lib-Cons have used the financial crisis as an excuse to force through the kind of ideological measures aimed at slashing state support that they've always wanted to implement but never previously had the balls to. Now they can sit there and sorrowfully pretend that it's all the fault of the deficit and that evil Lavour Government who allowed it to build. I agree that something needs to be done about the deficit, but what they're doing is ideologically dishonest and will hit the porrest people in society the hardest.

Thursday I went to City University where Clare Allan, the author of POPPY SHAKESPEARE, was giving a talk to the non-fiction MA Creative Writing class. I'd not read POPPY SHAKESPEARE although I was aware of the book and the very successful Channel 4 drama adapatation, but having listened to what Clare had to say I'm definitely adding it to my Wish List. She was brilliant - very honest in talking about how her own experiences in a psychiatric hospital had informed the book and how she'd intended it to be a satire rather than a serious book. She also talked about her current book and how she'd spent the last 6 years working on it, toether with her writing process (which is predicated on writing a huge amount and then whittling down and reworking during the editing process). All in all it was a really interesting evening and I was v. pleased that I managed to make it.

I lost all of yesterday to a migraine - one of the worst I've had in a long time and which left me spending most of the day in bed trying not to even think because it hurt so much. Not great. I suspect that it was triggered by stress because I've cut down on everything else that might trigger it, but it's bloody annoying. I don't have a huge amount of spare time so to lose the little I have is something that I really feel.

Finally, Toby the downsairs dog hates me. He's taken to growling whenever he hears me enter or leave the flat. Everyone else gets a bark bark bark thud. I get a grr GRR GRRRRR. It's the kind of noise that communicates his intent to rip out my throat and poo down my neck. And he's only a small dog. It would take real determination and a ladder for him to do that. I suspect he'd borrow the ladder from Flash the tortoise. Anyway, I've taken to avoiding the neighbours because it's getting to the point where it feels like a vendetta on the dog's part and I dont want them to think that I've done anything to provoke it.

Comments

What depresses me is that even if the government grows some balls and does a tax on bank profits, the banks will simply pass the tax on in the form of greater costs to customers.

I'm livid at the moment because the interest rates on savings is pitiful, everytime I go into my bank they try and get me to take out an account that I have to pay for, they're getting rid of cheques over the next 5 years (which is still a handy form of payment that people use no matter what they claim) because it's not cost productive for them and when I want them to do something simple like transfer money from one account to another, I have to jump through 3 hoops and say the magic word and book an appointment with my personal banker (who changes identity every squicking time) to do so.

At the time I believed that Northern Rock should have been allowed to fail and I still hold that opinion. Now every bank is sitting pretty because it knows that the politicians are too gutless to actually step in and do something.